Friday, December 26, 2014

At this season of “Peace on Earth, goodwill
towards men” it is fitting to reflect upon the most effective engine for
peaceful cooperation, learning, discovery, innovation, material progress and
social toleration known to mankind. That
is the voluntary and unhampered exchange of goods and services; the free
market.

But rather than rehash the pronouncements of
deceased economists, I want to share a real life example that I am living
through today. As my friends and blog
followers know, I am at a career crossroads exploring alternate paths. These paths include seeking another job in my
existing career discipline, opening a marketing /media consultancy and
evaluating business opportunities outside of my field.

One of these opportunities involves a
technology that has the potential to make the world a better place while
delivering a handsome payout to its inventor and those who successfully market
it. If the rest of this blog seems a bit
much like a commercial, so be it. I’m
not ashamed to shill for something that produces social good while making a buck
or two for me.

The product is called RD Fresh. It is a mixture of 100% natural and harmless minerals. While not a very new product, it is still
obscure has been under marketed. It was
created by a chef not marketing and sales types. I have joined with some entrepreneurs to
grow market penetration.

When placed in a refrigerator, RD Fresh does two
simple things:

1.It absorbs moisture thereby:

a.Reducing spoilage, keeping stored foods fresher
for longer

b.Enabling refrigeration units to run more
efficiently, cutting back energy consumption and equipment wear out

2.Eliminates refrigerator odors making food taste
better

Let’s focus on items 1a and 1b. At present, RD Fresh is intended for the
professional food service market although a home use version (Veggie Fresh)
exists. Let’s consider what happens when
restaurants reduce food spoilage and energy costs.

The USDA and other independent sources estimate
that 25%-30% of food in the U.S. gets wasted and thrown away due to
spoilage. The University of Arizona
calculates that the dollar value of wasted food in grocery and restaurant
channels exceeds $30 billion dollars annually.

Therefore, for a small restaurant, a $25 monthly
investment can the save the business a couple of hundred dollars on spoiled
food costs. This adds up to $2,000 to
$3,000 net savings per year. Here is
where economic calculation kicks in.

The owners of that restaurant can choose among three
things to do with the savings:

1.Increase their own take home pay – spend it on
themselves and increase their personal satisfaction

2.Reinvest in the business and create a better,
more competitive restaurant

3.Invest the savings in outside opportunities

In all three instances, this savings on
prevented waste spurs additional economic activity, which helps to create jobs
and incomes for others.

Similarly, the improvement in refrigerator performance
will reduce energy costs. The reinvestment
options on energy savings are the same as above and are additive to them.

Now multiply this by a thousand or a million restaurants,
food stores, hospital, school and military cafeterias. The result is millions of new investments and consumer
spending money flowing back into the economy.
This crates new jobs and new opportunities.

Reducing food waste and lowering energy
consumption has another important benefit.
This can reduce the aggregated
demand for both food and energy thereby making each more affordable for the
disadvantaged and most vulnerable members of society.

All of this would accomplished without one single
arm being twisted, shot fired, bill passed, tax levied or subsidy granted by government. Certainly, RD Fresh is not the miracle cure
that will suddenly transform Earth back into Eden. However, there are countless RD Fresh type
stories out there. Inventors,
innovators, entrepreneurs and investors, each making life a smidge better if
given the chance. And if they fail’ so
be it. Their idea wasn’t as good as they
thought it was. The market decides.

All major faith traditions encourage charity
and almsgiving. There will always be people
who legitimately cannot help themselves, who cannot compete in the
marketplace. It is good for our culture
and our souls to voluntarily help those in real need.

However the role of business in a free market is
to make the world a little better at a time with each and every transaction
between buyer and seller.

Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, was chided for his
lack of conspicuous philanthropy. Yet
for over 30 years he made the world a better place. He made it possible for people access powerful
computers in their homes. In 2011, Dan Pallotta
wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

“Without Steve Jobs we’d be years away from a
user-friendly mechanism for getting digital music without stealing it, which
means we’d still be producing hundreds of millions of CDs with plastic cases.

"Half the people are stoned and the
other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong
direction." -Paul Simon

Friday, December 12, 2014

Amnon, son of the Biblical King David, raped
and disgraced his half-sister and David’s daughter Tamar. In Levitical law, the punishment for this
crime was clear. Amnon was to be “cut
off” from his people – disowned, exiled, sent away.

However, David failed to punish Amnon because
he had a soft spot in his heart for his son.
Enraged by his father’s miscarriage of justice, Tamar’s brother, Absalom
took matters into his own hands and killed Amnon. Once again, David neglected his duty to
enforce the law; this time on Absalom for murder. In turn, Absalom grew contemptuous of his
father’s weakness and dereliction of duty.
Therefore, he rebelled against David, plunging the kingdom into civil
war and chaos.

This past month, America has seen grand juries
fail to hand down indictments in two high profile cases, plunging our cities
into chaos and violence. Was justice ill
served?

In a recent Coffee and Markets podcast, conservative attorney Leon Wolf explained the
grand jury process. Grand juries are not
trials. They are investigations led by
prosecutors. Their purpose is to obtain an
indictment with the blessing of the community as represented by the
jurors. A prosecutor typically would not
convene a grand jury unless he wanted to get an indictment. No defense is presented. All that the jury needs to decide is that
enough evidence exists to suspect
that a crime may have been committed
and that a full and open public trial is warranted. Normally the prosecution’s success is about
95%.

If the prosecutor’s purpose is to bring an indictment,
the standard of evidence is so low and the success rate is high, it begs the
question as to why no indictments were returned in the cases of either Michael
Brown or Eric Garner. After all, there
were dead men on the street and reasonable evidence to suspect at least police malfeasance.

I will not deny that racism exists in America
and some people are racist. However, I
do not believe that White cops are on the hunt for Black men. Something else is at work here.

In a
New Republic article, Brian Beutler,
blames a too cozy relationship between prosecutors and police. Beutler hypothesizes that “prosecutors and
police departments are too tightly linked for due process to mean anything”. Prosecutors depend on friendly and cooperative
relationships with local police in order to get their jobs done. Because of this he asserts that it “isn’t the
quantity or quality evidence” that prosecutors have at their disposal that results
in botched indictment. Rather it is that
officials “so freely disregard it”.

Who is to say that in any of the aforementioned cases
that the prosecutors deliberately tanked the indictment the indictment process? However, the apparent consistency of
favorable outcomes for the police is enough to raise eyebrows.

The story of David and Absalom reveals no
change in the human condition in the past 3,000 years. When people sense that justice is denied then
anger, rage, violence and chaos are inevitable.
When those who are duty bound to uphold the law place themselves above
it, there is lawlessness.

Two plausible suggestions have been forward to recuse
local prosecutors from cases involving their police force partners. There may be others. The first to appoint special independent
prosecutors. The other is to defer to
state attorneys general. Neither are
beholden to local police departments.

In any event, something needs to be done. When people lose confidence in law
enforcement we all become less safe.